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On page 30 of Reaching the Campus Tribes, I broach a subject that I believe is really important for churches to ponder. The interesting dilemma is that some modern-style churches may actually impact students worse while striving to break with tradition. In fact, while trying to be more missional, some churches may end up less missional.
Some churches have opted to go the “non-traditional” route by pointing students directly to their intergenerational structures, “fully assimilating” them into the adult programs of the church. They plug them into small groups, Bible classes, or other activities alongside the church’s adults – without any opportunity for small group discipleship as college students or specialized outreach to local college campuses.
(Certainly, this sometimes takes place by default when churches haven’t taken the time to plan anything for students, leaving collegians to trickle into other areas of the church – and otherwise not stick around. That’s not what I’m talking about.)
As I write in Reaching, the full-assimilation method “certainly reflects a clear respect for college students as full members of the local congregation.” So on one hand, I applaud the motivation behind not separating college students and treating them as a distinct congregation (as one leader at a famous Emerging church described).
But for these highly missional churches, the funny thing is that this approach may be LESS missional in regard to those college students. Why? Because this method usually involves yanking them out of their actual community.
Though a college campus is located geographically within a particular area, it rarely has a high degree of sociological similarity to the rest of that area. Especially at residential colleges, many college students have one primary community – and it isn’t the local neighborhood, nor is it particularly similar to the local neighborhood. It’s the campus, and it’s (obviously) a world of its own.
This means that these otherwise missional churches are being highly “attractional” (in a sense that’s opposite from their normal efforts). If I’m not mistaken, this format pretty clearly demands that collegians leave “them” to come away with “us” to do church – both in location and in identity.
If we desire to be missional with college students, we have to think through what that means in their special case. Just as reaching our neighborhood missionally involves connecting with people “on their terms” and “on their turf,” impacting college students missionally involves recognizing their unique terms and turf, too. While it’s good for college students to get out of their small worlds some of the time, learning to live for Jesus within those worlds is vital, too.
The way I put it in the book was:
At the same time, it must be remembered that many college students’ cultural identity and community are located not in the local neighborhood but specifically within their collegiate experience. Thus any church aiming to reach people “missionally” and contextually should consider the special situation of college students. Unless efforts are made to reach campus tribes on their own terms, we may actually be missing opportunities for relevant impact in this important life stage. And we will be removing students from the very communities in which they presently have the most influence for God’s Kingdom.
I’m still thinking this one through. That’s one way we advance college ministry – through debate and rigorous thought. So while I’ll keep thinking, I did want to address this here. And I’d love to hear your thoughts – positive, negative, or illustrative.
[(This post got some really helpful comments - if you can't see them below, click here to see the post with the comments. Meanwhile, the next post continues the discussion.]
As I messaged to everyone in the Facebook group last week, I’m working on a new endeavor for the fall!
This project focuses on one of the most neglected areas in college ministry – strategic development of churches’ collegiate impact. My hope is to spend the Fall Semester helping a handful of churches strategize their College Student Plan – however big or small, normal or unique, simple or complex each Plan needs to be.
While my proposal presently focuses on the Dallas area (since that’s where I am at the moment), I am honestly open to considering any location where a handful of churches would be willing to try this for five months. I would be bringing my national research to bear on the local experience, and I can’t imagine anything more fun!
Primarily, this endeavor will be a great fit for churches that have struggled finding long-term success in this area or don’t have anything for college students at all. But this may also fit some churches that already have something going; in those cases, I would be determining areas where the College Student Plan could be expanded, changed, or otherwise improved.
The entire proposal can be found at www.collegestudentplan.com.
SO as I get ready for this new project, I would love for your prayers, your interest, and your help! If I’m going to do this in the Fall Semester, I need to start by early August, so time is VERY short.
If you do wanna help, please think about any contacts you might have – in the Dallas area or otherwise – that might be interested in what I’m doing. You can send this info on to them, or let me know. I would also love any thoughts you have on the project itself.
Meanwhile, don’t worry – this project doesn’t mean I’m any less interested in continuing to research and encourage the other branches of college ministry (campus-based ministry and Christian college chaplaincy). I’ll continue to do that! Plus, this is a short-term project, only planned for the Fall Semester, and much of what I’ll be exploring should be applicable and helpful for all of us! (Importantly, one of my key considerations with each church will be examining what is already happening in ministry on each campus.)
To learn more about the general idea of the “College Student Plan,” see the final chapter of Reaching the Campus Tribes – specifically page 98 and following.
I appreciate you guys and look forward to this newest adventure. As with every project, my overarching goal is to help develop our field. Thanks for being a part of that cause.
As I look at the various “themes” God seems to have brought up on the recent 6-week trip, probably the most obvious was the theme of Vocational Discipleship. It was interesting that time and time again, college ministers spoke with me about this issue: Training students to live out their vocation in light of God, His calling, and His reign. It’s worship through our work, sanctifying the “secular,” living as Christians disguised as dentists, teachers, politicians, baseball umpires.
I had a wonderful college ministry experience during my time at Texas A&M. It prepared me for life and ministry in ways I continue to remember fondly – and miss. But I don’t remember once hearing anyone suggest anything about connecting my “school life” with my spiritual life in non-obvious ways. I certainly could be forgetting, but it wasn’t prevalent, that’s for sure.
My mentors and peers weren’t anti-education. I’m sure we encouraged each other to “do our best,” and even if that command is cliché it’s also very Christian. But I have occasionally wondered – during that time and since – why no one ever offered discipleship on living that out in the particulars. As with anyone, my “educational profile” was complex; in my case, I was a Psychology major, strong academically, studying in the Liberal Arts college, thinking about going into Business… or Psychology… or Ministry, taking Honors classes, taking 18 hours (some semesters), taking far less (some semesters)… and so on. Any of those aspects of my “educational identity” could have been approached as “calling” – but what did I know?
Like I said, my experience was fantastic. But this is an area I would say was probably missing.
Fortunately, the prevalence of this lack within college ministry may be changing. Or maybe I just ran into it a lot because I was in the Northeast, where education, academia, and “the public sphere” hold a particular esteem. (Who better to lead us in this?) Either way, it seems like something that should be on our radar. Not only does it ready students for the Transition Out, but it helps them comprehend what it means to be a disciple within that 50+ hours a week they’re going to be devoting to calling.
We have plenty of other discipleship areas on our collegiate radars, too; we fit each piece as /when God leads. But I imagine that helping our students connect their (future and present) profession to their spiritual lives may just be one of those “great in the basics” ideas that should top our priority lists.
Later this week, some resources on this and thoughts on doing this in your ministry!
For more:
Post #2 in a series on Jimmy Fallon’s connection to / reflection of Millennials!
The night of his version of Late Night debuted, I noticed that Jimmy Fallon looked really earnest as he ran his way through the streets of New York City to host his very own, brand new talk show in the big city. After that fitting intro airs nightly, a quite dapper-though-goofy Fallon strides out to a stage he seems just a little uncomfortable with.
And he might just seem a little uncomfortable with his entire production, as numerous blogs and articles have noticed. The very first episode seemed almost rigged to produce both nervousness and awkwardness; no young buck picks DeNiro as a first guest in order to sail smoothly. Fallon regularly laughs at his own jokes, shrugs off the (many) jokes that flop (or gives the cue card to someone in the audience), and he certainly doesn’t hide the fact that he wants people to like him.
But the funny thing is that people actually may. And I think this “goofiness” is part of Fallon’s attractiveness to Millennials, which I began posting about earlier this week.
Here’s my theory: I think (subconsciously?) Millennials can see goofiness a signpost for authenticity. And authenticity is really key for connecting with those gals and guys. Where Gen Xers may cynically doubt that anyone can truly be authentic, Millennials are more optimistic – but they demand it!
And in some real ways, discomfort, awkward moments, goofy earnestness, and the like could help viewers believe they’re getting “the real Jimmy Fallon.” Can those things be manufactured? Of course they can. But in Fallon’s case, any postured goofiness would have to pre-date his Saturday Night Live days, where his earnestness and uncontrollable laughter abounded. And he’s clearly attempting to be funny – and, in the opinion of many, often failing. So I don’t think his awkwardness is a put-on.
What’s interesting, though, and important for us ministers to note, is that likability might just trump laughter (or any other “skillfulness” or “slickness” we’re aiming for in our own contexts).
Meanwhile, every joke that bombs, every guest interview with awkward moments, even the self-deprecating turn as his own staff’s whipping boy in fake-reality-show “Seventh Floor West” may have down sides, but they also earn Fallon authenticity points. So do the occasional personal revelations, like Jimmy’s excitement over receiving his long-awaited college degree from the school he dropped out of, or the highly normal personal photos on the show’s website.
Millennials want to believe that there are REAL people and REAL organizations out there. And they themselves have been pretty willing to expose their lives – to a fault – on blogs and social networks and more. Ministry to them will work best when they can see that we’re being authentic.
Not all of us are naturally goofy – so don’t go creating that persona – but authenticity can have plenty of other signposts. For many of us, simply relaxing our guard will lead to “revelations of realness” soon enough; others may need to try hard to (wisely) sprinkle some “me-ness” amidst the “Him-ness” and “you-ness” of our ministries. However we reveal our authentic selves, our college students (and other Gen Y-ers) will be glad to see it.
The subject line seems like it’s gotta be redundant, doesn’t it?
This week’s Fridea arose from a church visit I made last weekend. Preston Hollow Pres here in Dallas is, like many Presbyterian churches, pretty liturgical. But the surprise for me was the fact that they had a little girl – elementary age – leading quite a bit of this week’s liturgy. She read Scripture, performed the “Leader” portion of some responsive reading, directed congregational actions, and so on.
It was actually pretty neat, and she certainly proved capable.
So it got me thinking, exploring the edges along the “who” axis of our college ministry meetings. What if you intentionally integrated particular “whos” that are generally underrepresented in students’ lives?
I remember realizing in college how rarely I ever saw babies, for instance. It was kinda weird, an insulation that isn’t necessarily benign. Are there ways even our weekly meetings could bring some generational variety to students’ lives?
Could adults, little kids, senior adults, young married people, and others somehow participate in our meetings?
- Praying
- Leading (or helping lead) worship
- Guest-teaching (once or longer)
- Leading discussion groups
- Fellowshipping before and after
- Leaders simply bringing their families with them
- Testimonies
- Whatever
Clearly, some of these are easier to imagine than others, and you probably won’t have little kids preaching anytime soon. But what if you did have a worship leader who reprised the role he played in the Jesus Movement a few decades ago? Or if your meeting ended with a kid’s testimony of following Jesus in the 6th grade? Or a young married couple who testified that God does know how to write great life-stories? Or a 60-year Christian who prayed with (or prayed over) your students?
Would it spark anything in your students to be reminded of “the others”?
Plenty of college ministries (especially church-based ones) have found some ways to connect adults and families with students. But helping students remember there’s a world outside of their bubble is wise for any of us; intentional intergenerational integration might just be one (interesting) way to do that.
As always, you can see all the previous Frideas here.
As you may have seen via Facebook or Twitter, I wasn’t a huge fan of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But for what it’s worth, watching the original Transformers movie (which I like) immediately beforehand AND watching the sequel opening night at midnight both improved my experience.
(If you’ll remember, I encouraged as much just last week. Hopefully some other summer films in that list will be better!)
But I did notice something, being a college minister and all: Transformers 2 is heavy on good reasons for investing in college ministry! So here’s the (mostly tongue-in-cheek) list:
(no vital plot spoilers here, but don’t read if you don’t want to know anything about the movie)
12 Reasons We Need College Ministry, as Revealed by Transformers 2
- Students need help dealing with the relationships they’ve left at home (e.g., parents, favorite cars, and Megan-Foxes).
- Parents need help letting go of their students.
- The party scene.
- The computer-geek-conspiracist scene.
- Crazy roommates (e.g., kitten-calendar magnates, mentally unstable room-trashers).
- Aggressive hotties!
- Aggressive bullies!
- Pompous professors (who look like that one guy on that one show…).
- Know-it-all classmates.
- The dangers and opportunities of traveling abroad.
- Co-ed dorms!
- College freshmen might just turn out to be heroes – they just need help (from awesome robots or senior adult robots or college ministers) to get there!
As I’ve been preparing for my newest Exploring College Ministry Project, an unexpected byproduct has been produced.
And don’t worry, this is no industrial waste byproduct, but actually something that could be really helpful for spreading the word about the IMPORTANCE of ministry to college students.
Here’s the resource:
If it looks familiar, it should! This is the bootleg version, the black-market version, the pirated-to-the-max version of Reaching the Campus Tribes…
Actually, it’s just an abridged version. What I’ve done is repackaged chapters 5 & 6 of the book, along with the “Conclusion and Vision Trip” – the three parts that talk most clearly about why reaching college students is vital, helpful, and practical.
This way, we can introduce others to this theme even if they’re not willing (yet) to read an entire book about college ministry. So although the original book is a very quick read, this newest book – Why Reach the Campus Tribes? - is even smaller, with about 40 pages (and plenty of pictures!). So it’s a perfect intro for parents, pastors, college ministry supporters, youth pastors, church members, and others who need to know what we already know – that college ministry really matters!
As with the full book, Why Reach? is free – and sharing is encouraged! Send it, print it, Facebook it, blog it, Twitter it, read it… and help our field!
Get it at www.reachingthecampustribes.com/why. Or for a shorter URL, you can use http://bit.ly/whyreach
You’re right – we are now officially friends. :) Facebook makes the world go ’round!This is all in response to your email – hope it’s okay that I moved it to Facebook…
It has been quite a week – I keep getting semi-sick, which is a big pain. I think my body’s just catching up from all the road-tripping – it was pretty taxing this time around. But I’m also needing to get stuff done…
I’ve been working on my next project – it’s going to be interesting. I’m looking for some churches to let me strategize their ministry to college students. If you wanna check it out, it’s at http://www.collegestudentplan.com. We’ll see if God wants to bring this together, but I know I’m supposed to try!
Thanks for the low-down on your life! That’s interesting about the differences between grad and undergrad – but I’m a collegiate nerd. I’m glad you still get to be around those undergrads still. I would miss them, too.
I think that even old people can go to Schlitterbahn. But that’s just my opinion! Do you really mean that some of your first cousins are SIXTY? That’s pretty crazy. Do you have a billion cousins?
Either way, I hope you have a fun time in my state! I appreciate the thought of the shoes+swimsuit. That does seem very California – I appreciate y’all’s pragmatism out there. :)
I didn’t get to go to New Braunfels, but I’m sure I’ll be back down there sometime. I have gotten to go to something at T-Bar-M Ranch recently; that’s down thataway. It’s been a long time since Schlitterbahning, but since I keep mentioning it, I’m growing in my hope to go back.
I was indeed on another official trip at NACCAP – in fact, it’s a big part of the reason I was on the trip! This time around, I had something I spoke at in Nashville in early May (a college ministry conference), and then the NACCAP thing. So I had to decide… would I take two road trips to roughly the same part of the country, back-to-back? Or would I take one BIG trip?
I took one big trip.
Glad you made it home safe and sound. I didn’t realize that you were on another official road trip when I met you. I assumed incorrectly, obviously. So, tell me more about these road trips of yours. You’ve peaked my interest… What motivated you to embark upon them? Which campuses are doing the most creative things and what are they doing? In what areas have you worked in college ministry previously? What jobs did you like best? I’m assuming you plan to stay in college ministry for the future… I’d love to hear more.
Dionne
From the beginning, I heard rumblings that Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night tenure would aim squarely for Generation Y, those born mid-1980s and later who make up the largest American generation.
A refresher, just so we’re on the same page:
- “Generation Y” = “Millennial Generation”
- The oldest Millennials are now 25-ish
- So that means there were 6 years of ‘em who could vote in the last national election – a pretty big group, and clearly growing every year.
- And that also means that Youth Ministries and College Ministries are entirely made up of Millennials (and most Elementary-aged Ministry is, too, depending on where the new generation starts)…
- …while Young Adult Ministries will be influenced by Millennials more and more.
I don’t want to take too much time advocating for attention to generational attributes, but I’d encourage you to think about adding this area to your learning repertoire if you haven’t already. Sociologists, who study people-in-groups, look at group attributes to distinguish generational qualities. So not every individual will identify with the “template,” nor are any of the lines rigid or the patterns exact. But there do seem to be generational attributes that stick with generations (as a whole) as they grow older. And even those individuals who are naturally dissimilar from the rest of their generation are still molded an awful lot by the same forces – and by their peers.
So I believe it makes a lot of sense to study these attributes, even as we (of course) treat people as individuals. In a way, it gives us a “middle” to aim for in large group ministry, just as I’ve heard moviemakers design their films for the central theater seat. Everybody in the audience gets the best possible show when the movie is “made” for that middle. And while we may not think of ministry in quite such pragmatic ways, it does seem like our connection to our audience might be improved by recognizing a “Millennial Middle” to aim for.
So back to Jimmy Fallon.
From what I’ve seen, the prognosticators were absolutely right – Fallon is both playing to and reflecting a Gen Y mindset. And that makes sense for NBC, right? As Jay slides down to 10pm (9pm Central, which is my world), he satisfies his aging, largely Boomer audience. Conan heads to the Tonight Show with his (also aging) broad group, an audience I’m guessing is comprised of a healthy supply of young Boomers, lots of Gen-Xers, and older Millennials – everybody he’s collected over the past 16 years.
And now there’s Jimmy, aiming to pick up the newest crowd, hoping to connect with the loud, proud, happy Millennials. And I’d say he does so in such a textbook way that the show’s elements serve as a phenomenal primer for thinking through Millennial Ministry Methods.
So for the next few weeks, I’ll be blogging off and on about the various “Millenniality” reflected in the new Late Night. I would love for you to chime in on things you’ve noticed AND ways to apply these methods in our (clearly different) world of ministry.
Before I close, a brief disclaimer: Clearly, Fallon is not presenting his show on TBN; in no way am I claiming there’s nothing offensive. There are offensive jokes and offensive elements at times (though it’s plenty cleaner than it could be). But for us who minister to Millennials, it still seems like a good opportunity to observe an apparent mastery of Millennial Methods – and to observe a show that some of our students are surely watching during the lazy, hazy days of summer.
It’s always interesting to watch as my various road trips take on particular “themes.” Sometimes these are ministry topics that keep popping up over and over, sometimes they’re college ministry trends that become noticeable through repetition, and other times they’re more “random,” but redundant, events.
The recent 6-week road trip had its fair share of themes, to be sure! So with the expectation that God brings up many of these things for my – and our – benefit, I’ll be examining those themes occasionally over the next few weeks.
One of the most prominent – and surprising – themes was the continuous value of social media for ministry connections.
Clearly, the idea of using social networks for, well, networking is neither new nor surprising. But in all my past road trips, I hadn’t had the chance to see its value so extensively. And through that, I’ve been realizing some of the ways these networks can help us even more than they have been.
Twitter was the most dramatic of aids, in large part because of the immediacy of results – and the unexpectedness of some of those results. For example, when I stepped onto campus at Belmont University, I wasn’t planning to do much more than observe the campus – and I tweeted to that effect. But within a minute or so, Guy Chmieleski, University Minister, tweeted me right back – and we ended up having a great conversation on campus that afternoon. My first-ever “Tweet-up”!
But that wasn’t the end of it, for sure. Some notable Twitter-enabled (or -enhanced) activity:
- After I tweeted about some of the University Ministries staff from North Park University attending the Princeton conference, the official “NPU Twitterer” wrote me back, encouraging me to tell them hi. That meant a perfect opening for a reconnect with the NPU UM staff, and we all ended up eating lunch together the next day.
- Several times I was able to announce my itinerary publicly – a campus I was visiting later that day, for instance – and get responses back about people I should meet, things to do, etc.
- I also had the chance to report immediately on my campus visits, my meetings with college ministers, and the other adventures of my trip. With pictures! It’s been lonely enjoying the “little things” of the last two years almost entirely by myself. So sharing the fun in 140-characters-or-less made the whole thing more enjoyable for me – and hopefully for others!
- Twitter also served the purpose of directly connecting me with fellow college ministers I hadn’t met before. Like Facebook and blogging, Twitter provides the opportunity to discover people involved in college ministry – and the Twitter crowd tends to be particularly interested in making connections like that. In at least one case, I ended up getting to stay with a minister I’d only Twitter-met! Providence, tweeted my way.
I noticed similar results with Facebook – and sometimes to an even greater degree – as I began using my Status and the Exploring College Ministry Facebook group to keep people updated on the major activities of my trip. While Facebook seems better suited to a little less frequent updating than Twitter, when I did send an update, I tended to get some really helpful responses – even from some surprising sources!
Soon, what I’m learning about applying this directly to our college ministry work.
I’ve been rather under-the-weather off-and-on since returning from Road Trip 11. It’s a pain, but I think my body is recuperating.
So I’m mostly taking today off from the blog, but there are a few big things coming on the blog I figured I could highlight even in my sickly stupor:
Jimmy Fallon & the Millennials
I’ve been paying attention to Jimmy Fallon’s helming of Late Night, and the expectations for it to aim squarely for Millennials have, as far as I can tell, held true. I’m going to take some posts in coming days to let Fallon serve as a primer for Millennial understanding. Of course, aiming for Millennials is really all college ministers have the option to do at the moment.
I’m still no super-expert on generational exegesis, so I hope you’ll chime in with additions, clarifications, rebuttals, etc.
Themes from the Trip
The aforementioned Road Trip 11 had several interesting themes rise to the surface, and I want to explore those. While some things I noticed in those six weeks were probably just blips on the radar, others reflect true trends working their way through college ministry at the moment.
The Big Big News
I should be announcing that new big project next week. So stay tuned for that!
Catch ya’ later. Hopefully I’ll be 100% soon enough.
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